Hosting

Managed Hosting & Domain Management

The anniversary date for all hosting configurations is June 1.

Domains are renewed according to their individual registration & renewal date.

All service and support requests, including custom DNS requests, should be sent directly to 3Cstudio. Thus, the term Managed. If your organization uses only one or none of these services, some or all of this information will not apply to you.

Managed Domain Services

$20/yr. for renewals and transfers*

no price breaks for multiple years… only the assurance the domain is locked-in for a longer period of time

no price breaks for multiple domains… only the assurance that all domains owned by you are in the same place and managed together

all domains are the same cost, even though often some TLDs (domain name endings) are more expensive than other TLDs (.org for example)

custom DNS edits are provided at the current hourly rate if rather involved; typically doesn’t cost anything extra in most cases, though

renewals are based on each domain’s initial registration dates

Managed Hosting Services

There are now tiers to hosting, as over the years clients have shown to require a few unique configurations.* Please note the tiers’ differences:

Tier 1: Basic Website w/out email

$120/annually

Tier 2: Basic Website w/ email | WordPress site w/out email

$180/annually

Tier 3: WordPress site w/ email (1-2 regular sized sites)

$240/annually

Tier 4: Large or Multi-Site (3-6 sites) WordPress site

$300/annually

Email Spam Filtering Services

Each user that would like to be protected by Baruwa spam filtering services would be required to add $1.50/mo. per mailbox, billed annually ($18/yr.).*

Commonly Asked Questions:

Q1. Why is my domain $20/yr. when I could be saving a few dollars on my own?A1. The domains with 3Cstudio are “managed”… meaning 3Cstudio takes on all admin, tech, and billing responsibilities on your behalf to provide you with that convenience as well as make it simpler for 3Cstudio administrate any changes, updates and renewals as needed without having to consult myriad logins and permissions. Bottom Line: managed domain care is mostly out of convenience for all involved. If ever you no longer wish to have your domains managed, simply request that they be moved to your own account, and we will work together to get the domain(s) transferred to the registrar of your choosing.

Q2. Why are WordPress sites more to host per year?A2a. Due to WordPress’s continual growth and popularity, there are more and more plugins, themes, and other options available to the WordPress user. Along with that growth and popularity comes increased unwanted attention from hackers and those that would like nothing better than to disrupt what others have in place with malicious activity. Thus, the efforts are ongoing on the part of 3Cstudio to:

continually be on guard for potential threats against the safety of the WordPress site as a whole.

Often the updates are to block potential vulnerabilities — therefore, updates should not be left unheeded for any length of time. Also, it is not enough for someone to state they will update their own plugins and themes — to monitor and keep track of a client’s update process from our end is as time-consuming as actually performing the updates ourselves. Sometimes a plugin will conflict with other plugins, the theme, or the styles for that theme — if that occurs, 3Cstudio can be immediately alerted, as the updating will be processed in-house.

A2b. Additionally, 3Cstudio pays a number of annual fees related to developer copies of widely used Plugins on clients’ behalf for added functionality on their WordPress sites. Some examples of premium (pay-to-use) Plugins are:

Gravity Forms

BackupBuddy

Soliloquy (slideshows)

… to name a few. This Managed Hosting fee helps defray the cost of renewing the annual fee on these commonly used Plugins.

Q3. Why is it more costly to have email running through 3Cstudio?A3. Mail is a real bear because a). it is (by far!) the biggest hog of hosting space when compared to website content, b). it is often times prone to falling prey to hackers and malicious intentions quicker than websites, and c). providing free mail support has proven costly to 3Cstudio from a time and monetary standpoint for far too long.

Case in point: let’s suppose the average site with email takes up X amount of space — a typical arrangement of this sort will see that mailboxes (specifically the Sent folder) take up roughly 80% of their virtual server space. This is why even hosts such as Dreamhost require mailbox quotas if people are to stay within their allotted hosting plan. At any given time, nearly half of 3Cstudio mailbox users are over the standard quota Dreamhost would allow for, which is 1GB…. with many of those mailboxes being 2-5x as large.

There are alternatives, but most are not free — not even routing mail through Gmail (Google Apps) — and they all still tend to have a quota of some sort. It is 3Cstudio’s goal to hold off on quotas for as long as possible by continually alerting / educating clients to the nature of file attachments and build-up within the Sent folder of their email setup. If these options are exhausted and/or the need is greater than the base mailbox quota, then mailbox increases are offered:

$3/mo. for 3GB mailbox size

$5/mo. for 5GB mailbox size

*Note: in all of these services, there is no guaranteed refund for early termination.